American Military News by Charlie Specht - The Buffalo News January 05, 2023
The Blizzard of 2022 hit Buffalo and other parts of the region with a ferocity not seen in at least 45 years.
While there is scant data available, the historic storm appears to have had a particularly devastating impact on Black people in the city.
The majority of those who died in Erie County due to the storm — 51% — were Black, Erie County officials said, even though Black people make up just 14% of the county population and 33% of residents in Buffalo.
“Ever since (Hurricane) Katrina, ever since Covid-19, everybody knows that these extreme weather events are going to have a devastating impact on communities of color, and particularly African American communities,” said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies. “The city and others know this and should have had a disaster plan. In fact, they had no plan.”
Many of Buffalo’s Black residents live in neighborhoods on the East Side, in the Ellicott, Masten and University Council Districts, where Black people represent from 56% to 77% of the population.
But the city, Erie County and National Grid have not released data that can be used to thoroughly measure the the storm’s impact on different groups of city residents — by race, by neighborhood or by income level.
City leaders say they are still in recovery mode and analysis of this kind will come later, once the city is dug out. They say much of this data is currently being tallied by city and county workers.
Mayor Byron W. Brown replied that all parts of the city were impacted by the storm when asked if neighborhoods on the city’s East Side were hit the hardest. His administration has declined to release a list of deaths by Council district. Erie County officials have also declined to release the names, ages and locations of all of those who perished.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/01/a-cascading-failure-blizzard-that-left-tens-of-thousands-without-heat-hit-some-in-buffalo-harder/
